


Falling*

by Netflix118



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Dreams, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, IronStrange, M/M, Mental Health Issues, More tags to be added, Nightmares, Not Canon Compliant, PTSD, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Past relationship - Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, Soulmates AU, Stephen Strange & Wong Friendship, Stephen Strange is a shut in, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, for the first half only though LMAO, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-13 12:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21493975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netflix118/pseuds/Netflix118
Summary: There have been rumors of soulmates being able to see into each other’s dreams for centuries. They created cool stories and sweet love songs, but they were hard to believe. Especially for Tony Stark, who was obviously a man of science; until his dreams began to get a little confusing.*Title is a work in progress
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark & Stephen Strange, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to do italics with this website and it's so frustrating
> 
> Also! This is a shorter first chapter than I'd have liked, but that's okay! I'm already writing the next one :)

He was falling. Falling? Crashing. He was being thrown around. Glass was everywhere; in his face, in his hands. Shit - everywhere. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see. Shaking. His hands were shaking so bad. Helplessness was suddenly washed over him, and he couldn't breathe. Again. The ringing in his ears, the flashing from the fluorescent lights that he could only assume were from a hospital, the pokes and prods in his chest, his face, his hands. It was too much. Too much.

Tony woke up, sprawled out on his sweat covered sheets, his blankets thrown about. It was a solid two minutes in the dark before the man finally got to catch his breath. That was… unlike anything he’d seen before. He was used to nightmares, especially those of the flashback type, thanks to a particular fiasco in an Afgan cave. But this… this wasn’t him. At least, not as far as he remembered. The dream was too dark, involved too many hospitals.  
His trembling fingers brushed through his hair, pushing it out of his forehead as his back hit the bed again. His stomach was twisting with confusion as his brain raced to catch up. He’d heard about people having other people’s dreams. The stories were usually of old people talking about seeing their loved ones in the war, or seeing their best friend’s happiest moments over and over. There were even stories of the occasional dirty dream, in weird, reversed ways. But he’d never heard of something like that. Never something that- that... Traumatizing.  
“Jarv,” Tony croaked, pulling the blankets back over himself.  
A blue light flashed in the corner of the room, alerting the engineer that the AI was attentive. “Ch-check uh.. Check my brain patterns. I-What just happened?”  
With a quick flash of holographic blue light, Tony’s phone was lit up with a notification.  
“Everything appears to be normal, sir. Are you sure this wasn’t just a bad dream?”  
The question caught him off guard. Well, was it? Maybe his brain just freaked out after having a full night's sleep for the first time in years. Maybe it was just a weird combination of his dreams from before. But that wouldn’t explain why he didn’t feel like himself the entire time.  
“Completely normal? Like... Nothing out of the ordinary?”  
“All scans showed that everything was completely normal; only a surge in ABH, GABA, glutamate, and norepinephrine during your nightmare. Shall I research the symptoms for you?”  
He nodded, pulling the blankets closer again. “Just… figure out why it wasn’t actually me, would you?” His mind was racing despite how fuzzy it felt. Maybe he just needed to fall back asleep. Yeah. Sleeping this off was probably the best way to go about this. It was, after all, healthier than the alternative of wandering downstairs and drinking or working the thoughts from his head. “Just send what you’ve got to me and I’ll figure it out in the morning.”

The morning came much earlier than he wanted. Yes, he could have closed the blinds and banished the sunlight and slept for another couple of days, but his brain was too active to fall back into his dreamscape.  
His blankets stayed snug around his now much calmer body as he wiggled over to the other side of his bed, blindly reaching for his phone. There were 10 notifications waiting for them, nine from Jarvis, one from Pepper. She was a kind person. Still checking in with him on when she thought about it, making sure he ate and slept and everything. They even still went out to dinner every once in a while. Yes, after the breakup, they were a little awkward, but it was more than obvious that they worked better as friends than as lovers. They were able to freely make fun of one another without the fear of over-offending and sleeping on the couch, there were no public appeals to worry about with how they were seen together, the perks were far more than the cons.  
He responded to her first, informing her that he had just woken up and would love to go to breakfast at some point in the day, though it might not actually be breakfast by the time he’d gotten dressed.  
The next thing he saw was the string of articles from Jarvis. Most of them were from reliable psychology blogs, some of which he was more than familiar with from past dream-adventures; others were articles reporting of vets diagnosed with PTSD who shared their experiences of bizarre dreams where they weren’t themselves. But there was one that really stood out.  
“Jarvis what the hell is this?” He called, opening the page and letting his eyes scan over the annoying font and onslaught of colors. The page was from some hippy-gypsy blog, which was obviously desperately underfunded. The top of the page assaulted his eyes with the words “Soulmates Connected by Dreams” in big, red comic sans. Good lord, did they even try to look professional?  
“It is an old theory produced by many Native cultures around the world. The idea is that one would begin to find themselves in the dreams of another. Some believe it is some kind of m-”  
“Uh-uh-uh. We don’t say the “M” word in this household,” he said quickly, sounding more fatherly than he’d intended. “This.. find me more of the psych research into this. And send an email to that brain scientist we talked to at the Gala last month. The one that took over after What's-His-Face went off the deep end. Don’t talk to me about this ‘magic’ bullshit.”  
“Very well, sir. Shall I tell Ms. Potts that you will not be making it to breakfast this morning?”  
Such a good AI. Really, Tony would probably be dead without him. “No, tell her that we might actually be going out to breakfast after all.” Maybe going out with Pep for the morning would be a good distraction. Maybe it would do him good to try and get back into a regular routine. Maybe the good habits would overpower this damn dream.

The first thing that hit him was the smell. It was overwhelmingly sweet- almost rottenly sweet. It made his stomach churn in ways he didn’t want to experience. Next, the fear and the feeling of being completely lost washed over him. Tears fell down his cheeks as he curled in on himself. The wood from the door was pressing against his back as people rushed by. Eyes pierced him with judgmental looks, and he suddenly felt like an absolute idiot for staying where he was. His back hurt. His feet hurt. His head was pounding. His hands. His hands. He heard a voice-his voice?- croaking out in desperation, begging whoever kicked him out to let him in once again. More people walked by, ignoring him or shooting him down with harsh judgment. The physical pain melted away slowly, only ebbing at his consciousness. He was left with mentally numbing pain as the lost feeling he had experienced earlier had nearly doubled. He’d lost everything.  
“Jarvis!”  
The first thing he felt were the blankets around him. Soft, fuzzy, dark blue and red blankets; the same ones he’d used for years. His pillow was under his head, and his back against the memory-foam mattress. That was second to process. His eyes were drawn first to the windows around him. The city lights blinked back at him as he started to finally catch his breath. That-that was different than the dream. His vision shifted to the blue light in the corner- his loyal companion, waiting to see what he needed. The heat in the room, the hum from the air ducts, the soft whirring from the lights in the hallway. He was safe. He was okay.  
God, what kind of a dream was that?  
“J, can you-”  
“Brain scans have already been completed and sent to you, sir. I’m afraid to report that they are once again, completely normal.”  
Tony let a groan escaped his lips as he wrestled out of bed, deciding that he’d gotten more than enough sleep that night. What was with these dreams? Why did they leave his waking state so confused and anxious?  
“Would you like me to continue with researching possible causes?” Jarvis asked, concern somehow slipping into his robotic voice.  
“Did, uh, did Brain Man email back yet?” Tony asked, scrubbing his hands over his face in frustration.  
“I have yet to receive a response, sir.”  
Another groan. “Let me know if anyone important tries to get ahold of me.”  
He didn’t like the defeated tone in his voice, but at this point, he was too tired to do anything about it. His legs were shaky as he stood and made his way to the bathroom, deciding that a shower should probably do him good. Clear his mind. Maybe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long omgggggg. Last week was black friday and also i'm just really tired and its been a real hard week.
> 
> It's a little longer than the last chapter and it's just about Tony Stark Needing A Fucking Hug™. I hope y'all like itttt :)

Stephen already knew who his soulmate was. Since he knew that soulmates existed; since the first night back in 2010. He wasn’t an idiot. Yes, the idea still confused the hell out of him, and needed much more research (why was he getting these dreams almost two years after the actual events happened? That wasn’t how PTSD worked at all!), but it made sense; he watched the news. He knew who those dreams belonged to, and it just happened to be one of the people he hated most in this world. 

But the nightmares caused him to feel some sympathy towards the billionaire. He had it rough. The news didn’t cover half of what really went on when he was away. The first time Stephen woke up from a nightmare, he couldn’t even take a shower because of how terrified he was, and he only had to suffer through the second-hand effects of their torture. He couldn’t imagine how miserable Stark felt. 

And he knew it only got worse. Watching the news and keeping up with current events gave Stephen an advantage, let him know what his dreams would soon be holding, but that didn’t make any of it hurt less. After the trader in the company (Obadiah Stane was his name; Strange did his research.) the nightmares got more frequent, but now had more people involved. After the attack on New York, he was almost positive that neither of them slept. Sure, Stephen was hardly present for the majority of the attack, brain surgery and all, but he got the pleasure of living it over and over and over again. He was almost sure that he knew that wormhole as well as Tony himself did at this point.  
And it seemed like the world refused to give him a break. 

Sokovia was next and the ‘Red Witch’ as he called her, he hadn’t care or liked her enough to remember her name. The terror of losing his friends, whose names he never could never quite make out, was a constant threat. Suddenly, the Accords brought on a whole new bout of horror, with a good portion of his fears becoming a reality and the sudden introduction of a child figure in his life. Things never seemed to slow or take a positive turn. The red-headed woman in his life left over and over again in his dreams, which correlated closely with the news in the rumors passed along the hospital (not that he cared about them, nor Stark himself). Stephen didn’t like Tony, so to say, but he felt sympathy for him. He realized the hardships that he was dealt, and how heavily they burdened him. At times, Strange even felt a strange sense of pride bloom in his chest when he saw the cocky bastard standing in front of a hundred cameras, delivering lines and lies as though he slept like a baby every night, like he wasn’t haunted by his past, present, and what would come of his future.

But then he would run into him at a banquet. Tony would be there, three or four drinks in, sloppily flirting with whatever female face he could find in the light of the party. It was a little disappointing, he had to admit, seeing the man that was supposedly his “soulmate” attempting to get up the skirt of some underpaid secretary that snuck into a gala. Maybe soulmates weren’t real after all.

But then the crash happened. 

For months - years, nearly, Stephen’s nights were plagued with horrors of his own. Stuck reliving the worst moments of his life, night after night, in flashes of terror and pain. It was then that he decided he would much prefer to live through Stark’s nightmares a million times over than deal with the trauma of his own. He was driven mad by his own sleep, which was only more frustrating. Between the sudden uselessness of his own hands, and the inability to sleep through the night, he was on the brink of a breakdown.  
The loss of what was apparently the last thing holding him down to earth, his last actual friend, the loss of Christine, threw him over the edge. In a fit of mania, most likely exhaustion induced, Stephen stumbled upon research of someone who could cure even the most stubborn of injuries, through an “experimental” medical technique. ‘The Ancient One,’ which sounded like complete bullshit; but it was bullshit he needed to believe right now. What seemed to be a night of mania and frustration caused research spawned what was expected to only be a month-long trip to a foreign country. Stephen Strange got much more than what he bargained for: the formation of more nightmare fuel, what some might call abandonment issues, and much more studying and fighting than he would have preferred. He really needed to start reading the warnings on these types of things. The time on the doorstep, his bleeding knuckles, and broken voice, how lost and terrified he felt still haunts him to this day. The humiliation of being less than his fellow students still lurked every time he tried to master a new skill. The fear of being abandoned, left behind, causing him to shut himself away within the strong, safe walls of the sanctuary; which was where he found himself now. 

The days were beginning to shorten again, which just gave Stephen more of an excuse to do nothing. As of now, around 6 o’clock in the afternoon, he was happily sitting in the library, an intriguing volume of theories about the time-space continuum (all of which were wrong) sprawled across his lap, a cup of tea on the table next to him. He was quite content. But something nagged at his subconscious, telling him that something was wrong. But nothing in real life - according to every other gut feeling he had, along with every magical one. Besides, there were magical sensors of sorts ready to warn him of even the slightest disturbance of their universe. Everything in the human world was correct. Everything was fine. There was no one attacking the Earth, no immediate threats crashing onto their planet, ruining this fine afternoon. For a moment, Stephen simply dismissed the feeling as his brain being restless or reorganizing itself to the sudden normal amount of sleep he was getting. The sourcer realized suddenly - the nightmares that cursed him for so long were out of sight. He hadn’t felt a disruption in his sleep for over a week now. It was almost like they were never there in the first place! Unfortunately, the realization only made the nagging grow. Something wasn’t right. But if not with him, not with their natural world around them, then with what? 

Tony was on his third day of “opting out of sleep,” as he liked to call it. The nightmares had freaked him out so much that he decided that going without sleep was better than waking up not knowing if he was in his own body or not for minutes after. They weren’t so much scary as they were disorienting. Don’t get him wrong, they were terrifying, but terror, he knew how to deal with. Disorientation was something he couldn’t handle; at least not right now.  
So he’d decided not to sleep. He’d decided that a pretty combination of coffee and Redbull could suffice until he figured out what in the world was going on with his brain. Yes, Tony could admit that he wasn’t doing the best right now, but hey, he was alive, and that was pretty good, considering his track record.  
His days had become full of research, which was getting more and more hysterical. He’d read up on some bald, supposedly magic chick and found out that her voodoo was able to cure bad dreams. His hopes were high as he’d started to plan out how he would get to her, when he found the next article (all of which were still in bad font, found on shitty websites. Seriously, these people needed to take a graphic design class.) reporting that she was dead. Fell out of a window during some magical battle that the rest of the world apparently didn’t know anything about. He felt a little upset, realizing that he was supposed to be one of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” and he didn’t know about a huge magic battle that took place right under his nose. Oh well, he’d have time to be mad about that later. 

A few hours after his hopes had been smashed, he finally found something that might be of help to him. 

Sorcerer Supreme, supposed, who now resides in New York City-  
“Sir, I hate to interrupt-”

“Then don’t. I’m busy, I think I’ve got something,” Tony shot back to the AI who dared to so rudely interrupt his reading.

“Sir, you’ve been awake for over 72 hours. It is highly recommended that you take a break, sir. You also have not eaten in 49 hours. If you continue doing this, I will have to initiate a lockdown protocol, as put into place by Ms. Potts.”

Tony let out a groan, throwing his head back as he leaned into his chair. He was so close! All he needed were some god damned answers! And he was right around the corner from them- he could feel it. “Then you tell me what the fuck is going on!” he growled, scrubbing his hands across his face in frustration. “You give me some goddamn answers!”

“Sir, I’m afraid I’ve given you all the answers I have found,” Jarvis responded, almost sounding sympathetic. God- that was the last thing Tony needed. Sympathy from a fucking robot. 

“Then please, for the love of God, let me work.”

And with that outburst, the AI grew silent. And suddenly Tony couldn’t focus. It was like the real weight of what Jarvis was telling him finally hit, and the exhaustion overtook him. His eyes drooped as he started to shut down his computers, finally giving up. 

“Jay, shut it down,” he muttered, already trudging towards the stairs. The soft whirring sounds of the computers and other machines began to fade behind him as Jarvis followed the instructions. What a good AI. 

Fuck, he was tired. Had it really been three days since he’d slept? It felt like hours! Well, it did before about two minutes ago. He found himself dreading the sleep he was about to endure, which was the reason he was avoiding his bed at all costs in the first place. He didn’t want to have to deal with the terrifying and trippy nightmares he had begun to associate with sleep. Didn’t want to deal with the after-effects of them, either; the terrifying feeling of loss and failure, the fear of getting into his own damn car, the whole nine yards of dealing with the fucking terrors. 

But nonetheless, a couple of minutes later, he found himself faced with his dark room, his deep blue sheets, and his fear of sleep. Luckily, the exhaustion had taken over and set him on autopilot, and Tony was staring this god damned car crash in the face again, for the first time in three days. Something in him twisted as he fell into the dream again. Something not only terrified and helpless but hungry and worried. He needed answers. He was even aware of this through the horror of his dreams. 

That is how the genius lost his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always greatly appreciated!! Let me know what you think of it or what you want to happen or anything <3

**Author's Note:**

> I love you all! Kudos and comments are always highly appreciated!!


End file.
